pollution

Industrialisation has left China with soil pollution that is damaging health and livelihoods across the country. The government had declared soil pollution data a “state secret”, but officials have slowly started acknowledging the issue.

The US Navy’s most sophisticated warship is designed to be operated by video gamers – the young sailors who crew their ships have, after all, been raised on video games.

Neil McArthur, a philosopher, asks if humans will ever be liberated from basic biological needs when it comes to sex.

Having persuaded the world that it now faces a terrorist threat, Beijing may discover find that “Wars on terror” are hard to win, says the FT’s David Pilling.

China’s rubber-stamp parliament meeting started off with war being waged on pollution and the war of words with Japan getting uglier.

Evan Osnos at the New Yorker looks at the dangers in China’s ethnic divide: “an emerging argument in Chinese policy and scholarly circles has come to see the failure of the Soviet Union as a failure to manage ethnic unrest.”

One of the most popular iPad apps in Beijing at present is China Air Pollution Index. The app is both addictive and disturbing. When I checked into a Beijing hotel recently, I found that – even from the 40th floor – I couldn’t see further than one block because of the grey smog enveloping the city. So I checked the numbers and discovered that the AQ level, which measures fine particulates that are especially dangerous, was 250 – about five times the level deemed safe.

Sergei Ignatiev has been a silent presence at the helm of the Russian central bank for 11 years. The end of his term and the question of succession has “gripped Russian markets, turning the central bank into a hive of intrigue”.

Chinese citizens are increasingly going online to vent their anger over pollution, forcing the government to respond.

Israel’s transport ministry has introduced new bus lines for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, a moved denounced as segregation – a “response to pressure from Israeli settlers who live in the West Bank but are unhappy about sharing buses with their Palestinian neighbours”.

The World

with Gideon Rachman

Gideon became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006. He joined the FT after a 15-year career at The Economist, which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Washington and Bangkok. He also edited The Economist’s business and Asia sections.

His particular interests include American foreign policy, the European Union and globalisation